A couple of thoughts on the post rat sentiment of "who cares about truth, I just want to thrive". On its face there& #39;s nothing wrong with refusing to have opinions on things and focusing on personal growth and overcoming trauma and all that stuff. BUT...

First, having opinions about things like COVID, technology, economics, etc opens you up to attack but also gives you credibility. If you have many great insights on personal healing and development, surely you can stick your neck out on something externally verifiable.

Many post-rats do this, but some refuse on principle. The real world is out there, and a thriving person should be able to face it and understand it instead of talking only about friends and meditation and crying and video games. I love these topics myself, but not exclusively!

And from the other side: thriving ultimately necessitates acquiring true models of the world. Models of psychology, physiology, community, culture, etc. Models that inevitably become entangled in external things because reality is one and all true things connect.

The habits of epistemology that help you understand research papers on medicine also help you figure out your own life. The rules of evidence, bias, wishful thinking, authority vs. observation etc are the same, just in a different domain and with fewer p-values.

There are many things in orthodox Rationality that may not be immediately useful for the goal of thriving, and may even be epistemically counterproductive if you end up in bad valleys. But caring about truth is good and useful no matter the end goal. https://putanumonit.com/2018/04/23/dont-believe-wrong-things/">https://putanumonit.com/2018/04/2...